Tuesday 21 July 2015

Lumberjanes Vol 1: Beware the Kitten Holly by Noelle Stevenson and Grace Ellis

Lumberjanes Vol 1: Beware the Kitten Holly written by Noelle Stevenson and Grace Ellis and illustrated by Brooke Allen is the first volume of collected issues in a new ongoing comic series.

At Miss Qiunzilla Thiskwin Penniquiqul Thistle Crumpet's camp for hard-core lady-types, things are not what they seem. Three-eyed foxes. Secret caves. Anagrams. Luckily, Jo, April, Mal, Molly, and Ripley are five rad, butt-kicking best pals determined to have an awesome summer together... And they're not gonna let a magical quest or an array of supernatural critters get in their way! The mystery keeps getting bigger, and it all begins here. 

I had heard a lot of good things about Lumberjanes before I finally got around to buying it. I dawdled on buying this because I didn't think I'd like the art. Turns out, it works really well for this story, especially with the way it's coloured in and laid out and stuff. It was a visually appealing read.

Part of what did finally convince me to buy it was the promise of a kickarse lady-centred story. And that it had. Lumberjanes is about five lumberjane scouts (and sort of their camp leader), at the lumberjane camp in the wilderness somewhere. They have some surreal and fantastical adventures which make use of their unexpected skills... as well as some of the skills they learn during the camp. If anything, the hype I was exposed to had me expecting a bit more from the comics — more depth, more character development. But in the end it's a short fun yarn, and anything more wouldn't have really fit in the pages available.

Lumberjanes is fun and a bit weird and I will definitely be reading the next one. I recommend Lumberjanes to readers who enjoy stories about women, especially with almost entirely female casts (one issue had an encounter with some boy scouts, but the rest were all ladies all the time). Whoo!

4 / 5 stars

First published: May 2015, Boom! Box
Series: Lumberjanes ongoing series
Format read: Trade paperback
Source: Online non-Amzon bookshop

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